The Other Side of Never
by tider58
Summary: Finn's gone, and Rachel's drowning in it. Not on Santana's watch.
1. Chapter 1

**I literally dreamed this fic.**

* * *

Santana doesn't even look at Kurt as they make their frantic but painfully slow way over to the address she has scribbled in permanent marker on the back of her right hand, even though the subway is fairly deserted this time of night and she can feel him fighting the urge to say something to her. If he does, she's most likely going to hit him. Hard. And she doesn't think she can be blamed for that, especially if what he wants to say sounds even _remotely_ like "It's not my fault," because _yes_ , it fucking _is_.

He was supposed to be on Rachel Watch tonight. That's what they'd begun to call it. Granted, for the few weeks since the funeral, Rachel Watch has consisted mostly of bringing her tea and water and trays of food and then hovering to make sure she actually eats something and doesn't just spread it around on her plate to make it look like she did. It's not a difficult job—but it is a horrible, gut-wrenching one.

Rachel Berry is no enigma. She is melodramatic on her best day, prone to bursts of eye-popping enthusiasm and baffling torrents of overreaction, both good and bad. That's not what this is, though. _This_ isn't even in the same universe. This is raw, sickening, seeping, festering grief. Plain and simple. This is Rachel Berry caught in a riptide hellbent on destroying her. And all that's keeping her from being swallowed whole by it is her roommates.

Or they _were_ , until _Kurt_ dropped the fucking _ball_.

As they emerge onto the sidewalk and begin to speed-walk down the dark, nearly empty street, Kurt can't hold his tongue anymore. "Look, Santana, I'm sorry. I'm worried too, but I don't see how this is all on me. I mean, she hasn't shown any signs of getting out of _bed_ in two weeks; how was I supposed to know she was—"

Santana doesn't miss a stride, but the glare she slides off of him is easily sharp enough to draw blood. " _Don't_ ," she cuts in, her dark eyes flashing so dangerously that he actually falls back a step.

Okay, then. Maybe now's not the time to defend himself.

When he'd first realized Rachel was gone, he debated texting Santana at all. Rachel is an adult, after all, and if she decided she wanted to get out of the apartment for the first time in ages, then who was he to stop her? Bringing an overprotective Santana into the mix would only result in unnecessary worry, hysteria, and discord for all of them. Not to mention yelling. Lots of yelling. Besides, she was at work and couldn't do anything anyway.

But then he went into Rachel's room (if you can call a space cordoned off from the rest of the apartment by nothing more than flimsy curtains a _room_ , and they all do) and saw the half-empty bottle of cheap tequila on her nightstand, the discarded clothing—including one of _Santana's_ dresses, and that's possibly the biggest red flag of them all—littering the bed, the floor, the desktop and chair. And then he called her—Rachel, that is—and her phone began to buzz from underneath a lacy black bra that he's surprised she even owns, and that's when he decided to call in reinforcements.

His text reads: "Don't panic, prob nothing. Rach gone. Ideas?"

Less than a minute later, his phone rang in his hand and wasn't it _just_ like Santana to skip some crucial steps. He lifted the phone to his ear, bracing, and before he could say anything: "The fuck d'you mean _gone_?"

Thus began a two-hour-long search. Once it was established that she couldn't have been gone more than three hours (Kurt saw this as a plus; Santana saw it as a fairly compelling reason to disembowel him with her freshly manicured fingernails), they split up and concentrated their efforts in a relatively comprehensive series of places they were all familiar with. Karaoke bars, music shops, parks—even despite the late hour—the dance club down the street that Santana had occasionally dragged Rachel to because their regular crowd consisted of a disproportionate percentage of lesbians to other people. The longer they went without a sign of the petite brunette, the more frantic—and pissed—Santana became.

Back at the loft to regroup, Kurt was putting out an APB on Rachel to the Glee Club group text thread when Santana's phone rang. She scowled at the screen for a moment as if it had offended her, then answered it with a clipped "Yeah?" that came out sounding bitchier than you might think possible for such a short word.

Kurt froze when Santana's expression changed from annoyed to alarmed in an instant as she listened to the person on the other end of the line. "I'm her roommate, who are you? How'd you get my number? What? Is she okay? No, I _know_ , but is she like—? You know what, never mind, just gimme the address." She snapped her fingers sharply in Kurt's direction and made the universal gesture for "Get me a pen." He ran to the kitchen and rummaged in the junk drawer, coming up with a half-dry Sharpie and tossing it to Santana. "Okay, go," she ordered the phone person once she'd uncapped the marker with her teeth. Kurt watched her scrawl something on the back of her right hand, his heart beating harder than seemed healthy. "I'm coming. Tell her—just don't let her leave, got it? I'm coming."

* * *

Santana is practically climbing out of her own skin by the time they finally make it to the building, catching the door as someone leaves and slipping inside. They take the stairs two at a time, Kurt breathing heavily by the time they reach the fourth-floor landing but Santana not even looking winded. They don't have to check door numbers, because the door at the far end of the hall is hanging wide open, people spilling out into the hallway, drinks in hand. She elbows past several of them who are too drunk to care that she's not exactly gentle, and enters a nightmare-scape of party ubiquity: a crush of bodies, red plastic cups, thumping bass, piercing laughter, tangles of inane conversation.

Kurt watches her practically bulldoze her way through the crowd, her eyes narrowed and her focus razor-sharp. He pities anyone who steps into her path before she finds Rachel. He follows a few paces behind, shooting apologetic glances at the ones who look indignant at Santana's rough handling.

When she begins flinging open closed bedroom doors, Kurt becomes concerned that they're going to get kicked out, but the third door turns out to be the right one. It bangs against the wall and ricochets into his face. He catches it and catches his breath as his eyes land on Rachel, huddled in a ball on the unmade bed. She appears to be asleep, or unconscious. A rather large, blandly attractive guy who looks unsettlingly like Finn is sitting next to her, holding a washcloth to her forehead.

"Who the hell are you?" Santana snaps at him. "Move, I got her. Rach? Rachel?"

"Are you her roommate?" the guy asks, standing up and handing the washcloth to Santana without hesitation.

"You the one who called me?" She perches on the edge of the bed he has vacated and strokes the cloth against Rachel's temple, the gentle motions belying the hard, guarded tone she directs at the stranger.

He nods. "She … your number is the only one she could come up with. She didn't give me your name, but said you'd—" he smiles, thinking of her phrasing, "be the most likely of her friends to come for her even though you would no doubt swear profusely and give me the third degree. This girl's a trip."

Kurt shakes his head. "You have no idea."

"How long has she been out?"

"About an hour. She was already trashed when she got here, and for a while it was fine, she was dancing with everyone and seemed to be having fun. But she kept drinking, and started getting kind of sloppy. I pulled her in here when a few of the guys in the living room seemed to be taking advantage of how drunk she was."

Santana's head whips around. "Taking advantage how?" she demands. "Who were they? Are they still here?"

"This is my apartment; that kind of stuff's not cool by me so I kicked them out. She puked a few times and then—" he gestures toward Rachel's still form.

"Did they _do_ anything to her?" Santana presses, her voice cracking in a way that only Kurt recognizes as emotion peeking through her tough veneer.

"No, no, nothing like that," the guy assures her, and she looks only mildly placated. "It was more trying to get her to agree to hook up, to go back to their place, shit like that."

"What did she say?"

He shuffles his feet uncomfortably. "A lot of stuff that didn't make much sense. She uh—when she started crying is when I got her out of there."

There is a long silence, and Santana goes back to gently wiping Rachel's brow. "Well thanks," she says so quietly it's almost inaudible over the party noises from the other room. "For taking care of her. For calling me."

The guy nods. "No problem," he says. "I'll leave you guys to it, now. If you need to like, stay here, you can have the bed. I don't know if she's waking up any time soon."

Santana and Kurt meet each other's gaze across the room and have a silent conversation.

Kurt will go home. Santana will stay with Rachel.

He knows it would be useless to argue.

* * *

 **Next up: Consciousness, crying, comfort. And talking. Lots of talking.**


	2. Chapter 2

Santana isn't sure how the Berry-feelings trajectory had gotten her here—from seething hate to prevalent annoyance to grudging tolerance to resigned affection to ditching work and turning Bushwick upside down in a base panic to find the girl next to whom she is now lying in some frat boy's bed—but she's not dismissing the theory that it involved some sort of voodoo on Rachel's part.

But really, it might have been set in motion the day Santana showed up at their loft, dropped her bag on the floor, announced "I'm movin' in"—and was met, against all probability, with nothing but a slightly puzzled smile and a comfy place on the couch.

It might have been the first time Santana went on an audition and was roundly rejected and Rachel left the apartment with unasked questions burning in her eyes and returned with a pint of Rocky Road and a bottle of Cabernet. (She eventually asked those questions, of course—this is _Rachel Berry_ we're talking about—but she managed to wait until Santana was sufficiently plied with ice cream and wine.)

Or when Santana took up smoking, briefly, in the days following her breakup with Brittany because it gave her a solid excuse to cry on the fire escape when she needed to without anyone being the wiser. Until that one night she climbed back in and came face to snot-and-tear-streaked face with Rachel, and the girl she'd once teased so mercilessly had caught her hand and pulled a smoky, heartsick Santana into a bone-crushing hug as a fresh wave of sadness threatened to buckle her knees.

However it had started, though, Finn's death three weeks and two days ago had cemented Santana as Rachel Berry's fiercest protector, and as a certain blonde dancer could tell you, that's not a role she takes lightly, nor one that she will ever, ever relinquish. (Even after everything that's happened, Santana would still drop everything to beat the shit out of anyone who so much as looks at Britt wrong, and everyone who went to McKinley knows that, cold.)

Rachel had seemed to be dealing fairly well, at first, making it through the funeral and the few days that followed in Lima, surrounded by friends and family who were also grieving and in shock at the sudden, cruel, unthinkable turn of events that had torn one of their own away from them, just ripped him from the fabric of their lives like so much tissue paper. She cried, of course, like they all did, and said the things you say and squeezed hands and hugged everyone who came within arms' reach. She even smiled the right way, with bright teeth and sad, glistening doe eyes. But something about it had left Santana cold. This wasn't Rachel Berry mourning her first love; this was: RACHEL BERRY, as "Rachel Berry Mourning Her First Love." It couldn't be healthy, Santana thought. She knew something of denial, after all. Not the same, exactly, but it gave her at least a bit of insight.

When they got back to New York and Rachel summarily retreated into her curtains, into her bed, into _herself_ , Santana wished she'd thought to get some notes from Mr. Schue on how to give one of those annoying, treacly, but somehow effective speeches of his. The ones that always left his captive audience somewhere between the verge of tears and the desire to feed him to the jazz band whose names no one knew.

"Don't you have class this morning?" Santana said one Monday when she found a pajama-clad, bleary-eyed Rachel leaning up against the counter and staring blankly into a steaming mug of coffee. (She didn't have to ask; she knew full well that Rachel had her dance theory class at 10 a.m. and, furthermore, that she had missed the past two of them. But she didn't want to lead with bossy.)

"Oh, um. Yeah, I guess I do," Rachel muttered. "I don't really feel like getting out today, though. I might be coming down with something."

Santana's eyes rolled of their own accord, probably. They did that sometimes.

"Yeah. You're coming down with hermit-itis, Rach. The only cure is to get out of those damn pajamas that are on at _least_ their sixth wearing since they've seen laundry detergent, put on some regular-people clothes, and get your ass to class."

So much for not leading with bossy.

Rachel just stared at her blankly for a few moments. "I washed these pajamas on Thursday," she said calmly, fanning the flames of Santana's frustration because the capital-P point? _Clearly_ hadn't found its mark.

"Look," she said after taking a few calming breaths and hoping that would be enough to make her sound reasonable. "You keep this up, the whole semester is going to be a wash. That's not fair to your dads; they're paying a shitload of money for you to be here. They deserve better, and, I can't believe I'm saying this, Berry, but you do too. You've been working your infuriating little diva ass off since _birth_ to get here. It's what you've always wanted. Everybody who's ever met you knows that."

There was such a long stretch of silence that Santana decided that Rachel was just simply not going to answer, and that might actually be a first for her, but then she blew gently on the steam from her coffee and said softly, carefully: "Things changed."

And what can Santana say to that? Of _course_ things changed; things always change as you grow up. But that was not even what she was _talking_ about because Lord knows only one thing has transpired that's earth-shattering enough to shake Rachel Berry off her dementedly determined journey toward future stardom. Santana's mouth, every bit as defiant as her eyes, spilled the words without getting permission from her brain.

"He wouldn't want this for you."

She flinched when Rachel's eyes snapped up to meet hers, and beneath a sheen of unshed tears was a simmering fury that Santana had never seen before in the other girl and would never have dreamed she was capable of generating. If she weren't Santana Fucking Lopez, she might have taken a step back.

The girls stood facing one another for an eternity, the only sounds coming from traffic on the streets below and the ticking of the stupid grandfather clock Kurt had dragged home excitedly from some rummage sale the week they moved in. Santana was just opening her mouth to say something—probably "I'm sorry," or a decent approximation thereof, which would have been kind of a big deal—when Rachel spoke first, her voice eerily calm and measured.

" _Never again,_ Santana. I swear to God, I'll— _never_ _again_."

Placing her coffee mug ever so gently on the counter, Rachel stepped pointedly around Santana and disappeared into her curtain-walled retreat.

* * *

The party starts to die down after 3 a.m., and Rachel still hasn't shown any signs of waking up. Santana has finally given in to her own exhaustion and simply climbed into the bed next to her roommate, trying not to think about the fact that she's lying on Random Boysheets and all the varying angles of _ew_ that might potentially encompass.

Just to avoid touching any more of the bed than she has to, Santana rests one arm protectively across Rachel's body, feeling the steady rise and fall of her chest, hearing her soft little sleep noises. She drifts off.

And is jolted awake some time later when Rachel shoots up next to her with a sound like a wounded animal. Santana's heart jumps into her throat. Rachel's eyes frantically scan the unfamiliar surroundings, and her breathing is starting to come in panicky sobs until she finally realizes who it is who has a hold of her. Santana's hands grip her upper arms and shake her firmly but gently, and she realizes she's repeating her name over and over, along with "Look at me."

"San—Santana? What are you doing—what am I—oh God, I'm going to be sick."

She clutches her stomach and leans forward, and a small bathroom-size trash bin magically appears under her face before she has even finished the first dry heave. A torrent of sour-tasting liquid spews forth, and when she's done, a cool washcloth wipes at her mouth and a glass of water is placed to her lips.

"Small sips, 'k? Not too much. That's it. Good." Santana waits until Rachel's fingers close around the water glass before pulling the trash can away and placing it on the floor by the bed. "Better?" she asks after Rachel has managed a few sips of water and shown no signs of pulling another Linda Blair. She gets a wordless nod in return. "Okay then, how about you lie back down. You're looking kinda green still, and if you barf on my diner duds I'ma have to punch you. They take these uniforms out of my tips, ya know."

Rachel blinks slowly at her, looking weirdly like an alien baby trying to make sense of its surroundings. "How did you get here?" she asks, her whispery voice scratchy and hoarse. "And … where _is_ here?"

Santana rolls her eyes. "You don't remember _anything_? Jesus, Berry, how much did you drink?"

"I don't know," she admits, averting her gaze. "I mean, I remember drinking back at the loft—sorry, I borrowed your tequila; I'll replace it—and then I think I took a cab here? A girl in my vocal projection course told me there was a party. I don't … remember deciding to come."

"So you left the apartment wasted, without telling anyone, without leaving a note so that Kurt and I wouldn't jump to the _worst_ possible conclusions, to go to some party and hang with a bunch of people you don't know? Smart, Berry, very smart." Santana can't help the scolding tone that colors her words; her natural protective nature comes with a built-in mother hen tendency.

"I'm sorry, Santana," Rachel says, her voice small. "I'm sorry you had to come all the way out here. It was inconsiderate of me."

"Oh cut the crap, Rachel. Is that why you think I'm angry? Because I was _inconvenienced_?"

Rachel's head tilts slightly in confusion. "You're angry?" she asks. "You're usually more—well, _loud_ —when you're angry."

Santana puts on her best scowl and is satisfied when Rachel averts her gaze. "I'm _containing_ myself because I don't want you to start puking again. And because I'm pissed but I'm also tired. It's—" she raises up on one elbow to squint at the clock next to the bed. "Fucking early. We can talk about all this once we're home and we've got some real sleep that's _not_ on nasty boysheets. Here, drink some more of this. You're going to finish the whole glass before I clear you for travel. I ain't gonna be the girl who drags the puker onto the train. Nobody likes that girl."

Rachel obeys. After a few small sips, she finds the courage to ask timidly, "Why are you being nice to me?"

"If you keep asking stupid questions that's gonna stop real quick," Santana warns half-heartedly with an eyebrow quirk Quinn would be proud of.

"Why didn't Kurt come?"

"He did. I sent him home."

"Why?"

"God damnit, Rachel, will you just drink the water and try to finish sobering the hell up so we can get out of here."

"I'm sorry."

Something in her tone pierces Santana's anger, which, if she's being honest with herself, isn't all that hot anyway. She's definitely _something_ … but anger is just a small part of it. "Hey," she says, and waits for Rachel's eyes to meet hers again. "Stop saying that, okay? I don't need you to be sorry."

"What do you need from me?" Rachel asks. Silence greets the question as Santana swallows the response that immediately surfaces.

"I need you to drink the water, Berry," she says.

 _I need you to be okay,_ she doesn't.

* * *

 **So, confession: I'm one of those writers who just goes where the words take me. This isn't exactly what I'd planned for this chapter, but it's on the right path. I see one or two more chapters to get where I *think* I'm going. If the story has other ideas, then so be it. I hope you'll keep reading. Thank you for reviewing and following/favoriting, and just generally existing, because I fell into the Glee-verse supremely late and am just happy there are still a few of you out there who are still captivated by these characters. And a little disclaimer: I'm a Brittana girl at heart but also have a weakness for Pezberry friendship-plus. Basically, start with badass-but-soft-hearted Santana, add ANYONE ON EARTH, and I'm a happy Gleek.**


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